813, Maurice LeBlanc [read aloud books .txt] 📗

photograph. He looked at it. It was his own.

“Two photographs… Massier and I… the two she loved best, no doubt… For she loved me… A strange love, built up of admiration for the adventurer that I am, for the man who, by himself, put away the seven scoundrels whom she had paid to break my head! A strange love! I felt it throbbing in her the other day, when I told her my great dream of omnipotence. Then, really, she had the idea of sacrificing Pierre Leduc and subjecting her dream to mine. If the incident of the mirror had not taken place, she would have been subdued. But she was afraid. I had my hand upon the truth. My death was necessary for her salvation and she decided upon it.” He repeated several times, pensively, “And yet she loved me… Yes, she loved me, as others have loved me… others to whom I have brought ill-luck also… Alas, all those who love me die!… And this one died too, strangled by my hand… What is the use of living?… What is the use of living?” he asked again, in a low voice. “Is it not better to join them, all those women who have loved me… and who have died of their love… Sonia, Raymonde, Clotilde, Destange, Miss Clarke?…”

He laid the two corpses beside each other, covered them with the same sheet, sat down at a table and wrote:

“I have triumphed over everything and I am beaten. I have reached the goal and I have fallen. Fate is too strong for me… And she whom I loved is no more. I shall die also.”

And he signed his name:

Lupin.”

He sealed the letter and slipped in into a bottle which he flung through the window, on the soft ground of a flower-border.

Next, he made a great pile on the floor with old newspapers, straw and shavings, which he went to fetch in the kitchen. On the top of it he emptied a gallon of petrol. Then he lit a candle and threw it among the shavings.

A flame at once arose and other flames leapt forth, quick, glowing, crackling.

“Let’s clear out,” said Lupin. “The chalet is built of wood, it will all flare up like a match. And, by the time they come from the village, break down the gates and run to this end of the park, it will be too late. They will find ashes, the remains of two charred corpses and, close at hand, my farewell letter in a bottle… Good-bye, Lupin! Bury me simply, good people, without superfluous state… a poor man’s funeral… No flowers, no wreaths… Just a humble cross and a plain epitaph: ‘Here lies ArsŽne Lupin, adventurer.’” -*

He made for the park wall, climbed over it, and turning round, saw the flames soaring up to the sky.

He wandered back toward Paris on foot, bowed down by destiny, with despair in his heart. And the peasants were amazed at the sight of this traveller who paid with banknotes for his fifteen-penny meals.

Three foot-pads attacked him one evening in the forest. He defended himself with his stick and left them lying for dead.

He spent a week at an inn. He did not know where to go… What was he to do? What was there for him to cling to? He was tired of life. He did not want to live

“Is that you?”

Mme. Ernemont stood in her little sitting-room in the villa at Garches, trembling, scared and livid, staring at the apparition that faced her.

Lupin!… It was Lupin.

“You!” she said. “You!… But the papers said…”

He smiled sadly:

“Yes, I am dead.”

“Well, then… well, then…” she said, naively.

“You mean that, if I am dead, I have no business here. Believe me, I have serious reasons, Victoire.”

“How you have changed!” she said, in a voice full of pity.

“A few little disappointments… However, that’s over… Tell me, is GeneviŽve in?”

She flew at him, in a sudden rage:

“You leave her alone, do you hear? GeneviŽve? You want to see GeneviŽve, to take her back? Ah, this time I shall not let her out of my sight! She came back tired, white as a sheet, nervous; and the color has hardly yet returned to her cheeks. You shall leave her alone, I swear you shall.”

He pressed his hand hard on the old woman’s shoulder:

“I will—do you understand?—I will speak to her.”

“No.”

“I mean to speak to her.”

“No.”

He pushed her about. She drew herself up and, crossing her arms:

“You shall pass over my dead body first, do you hear? The child’s happiness lies in this house and nowhere else… With all your ideas of money and rank, you would only make her miserable. Who is this Pierre Leduc of yours? And that Veldenz of yours? GeneviŽve a grand-duchess! You are mad. That’s no life for her!… You see, after all, you have thought only of yourself in this matter. It was your power, your fortune you wanted. The child you don’t care a rap about. Have you so much as asked yourself if she loved your rascally grand-duke? Have you asked yourself if she loved anybody? No, you just pursued your object, that is all, at the risk of hurting GeneviŽve and making her unhappy for the rest of her life… Well, I won’t have it! What she wants is a simple, honest existence, led in the broad light of day; and that is what you can’t give her. Then what are you here for?”

He seemed to waver, but, nevertheless, he murmured in a low voice and very sadly:

“It is impossible that I should never see her again, it is impossible that I should not speak to her…”

“She believes you dead.”

“That is exactly what I do not want! I want her to know the truth. It is a torture to me to think that she looks upon me as one who is no more. Bring her to me, Victoire.”

He spoke in a voice so gentle and so distressed that she was utterly moved, and said:

“Listen… First of all, I want to know… It depends upon what you intend to say to her… Be frank, my boy… What do you want with GeneviŽve?”

He said, gravely:

“I want to say this: “GeneviŽve, I promised your mother to give you wealth, power, a fairy-like existence. And, on the day when I had attained my aim, I would have asked you for a little place, not very far from you. Rich and happy, you would have forgotten—yes, I am sure of it—you would have forgotten who I am, or rather who I was. Unfortunately, fate has been too strong for me. I bring you neither wealth nor power. And it is I, on the contrary, who have need of you. GeneviŽve, will you help me?’”

“To do what?” asked the old woman, anxiously.

“To live…”

“Oh!” she said. “Has it come to that, my poor boy?…”

“Yes,” he answered, simply, without any affectation of sorrow, “yes, it has come to that. Three human beings are just dead, killed by me, killed by my hands. The burden of the memory is more than I can bear. I am alone. For the first time in my life, I need help. I have the right to ask that help of GeneviŽve. And her duty is to give it to me… If not…”

“If not…?”

“Then all is over.”

The old woman was silent, pale and quivering with emotion. She once more felt all her affection for him whom she had fed at her breast and who still and in spite of all remained “her boy.” She asked:

“What do you intend to do with her?”

“We shall go abroad. We will take you with us, if you like to come…”

“But you forget… you forget…”

“What?”

“Your past…”

“She will forget it too. She will understand that I am no longer the man I was, that I do not wish to be.”

“Then, really, what you wish is that she should share your life, the life of Lupin?”

“The life of the man that I shall be, of the man who will work so that she may be happy, so that she may marry according to her inclination. We will settle down in some nook or other. We will struggle together, side by side. And you know what I am capable of…”

She repeated, slowly, with her eyes fixed on his:

“Then, really, you wish her to share Lupin’s life?”

He hesitated a second, hardly a second, and declared, plainly:

“Yes, yes, I wish it, I have the right.”

“You wish her to abandon all the children to whom she has devoted herself, all this life of work which she loves and which is essential to her happiness?”

“Yes, I wish it, it is her duty.”

The old woman opened the window and said:

“In that case, call her.”

GeneviŽve was in the garden, sitting on a bench. Four little girls were crowding round her. Others were playing and running about.

He saw her full-face. He saw her grave, smiling eyes. She held a flower in her hand and plucked the petals one by one and gave explanations to the attentive and eager children. Then she asked them questions. And each answer was rewarded with a kiss to the pupil.

Lupin looked at her long, with infinite emotion and anguish. A whole leaven of unknown feelings fermented within him. He had a longing to press that pretty girl to his breast, to kiss her and tell her how he respected and loved her. He remembered the mother, who died in the lit tie village of Aspremont, who died of grief.

“Call her,” said Victoire. “Why don’t you call her?”

He sank into a chair and stammered:

“I can’t… I can’t do it… I have not the right… It is impossible… Let her believe me dead… That is better…”

He wept, his shoulders shaking with sobs, his whole being overwhelmed with despair, swollen with an affection that arose in him, like those backward flowers which die on the very day of their blossoming.

The old woman knelt down beside him and, in a trembling voice, asked:

“She is your daughter, is she not?”

‘“Yes, she is my daughter.”

“Oh, my poor boy!” she said, bursting into tears. “My poor boy!…”